Right-Wing Dandyism: Talk about feeling a stain like a wound...

Thursday, cigarette #2

"The more conservative members of our clique deny that a woman can be a dandy. What do you have to say to them?"

"A dandy recognizes no authority except her tailor."

An anonymous reader suggested in an email that all my recent posts about the future of conservatism sound like nothing so much as a proposal that the movement be handed over to gay men. Anyone who saw me jumping around to the Pet Shop Boys with Houseguest James (who is Bruce Benderson to my Camille Paglia) last Friday would be forgiven for coming to that conclusion, but it would be closer to the truth to say that I want the reins handed to the dandies.

Disraeli is the best example of the historical (if not entirely intuitive) connection between dandyism and conservatism, but Edmund Burke had a little fop to him (see his description of Marie Antoinette). Radclyffe Hall was a right-winger in spite of, well, everything. Half the biographies of the Victorian dandies end with conversions to Catholicism. (Full disclosure: my senior essay began as a survey of Catholic conversion among Decadent writers, until my advisor pointed out that it would be sprawling enough for him to read with just Oscar Wilde.) Ditto for the second wave (Waugh, Howard, Acton).

If the big items on the conservative psychological agenda are shoring up gender roles, increasing people's comfort with various kinds of aristocracy (social, economic, moral), and making them less afraid to be critical (Tushnet to Yale feminists: "IT IS OKAY TO DISAGREE, OMG"), then who better to lead the charge than a monocled brigade of Romantic traditionalists? Fashion is more uncompromising than morality — you can reserve judgment on someone's moral errors, but no amount of philosophical gymnastics will make an outfit look more fashionable than it is. (Fitness is also un-fudge-able in this way, which is why Huckabee's Jack Lalanne health care plan strikes my ear as "indicating real moral character" rather than "kind of weird.") When the Pope wears "sumptuous" vestments, it isn't just a chance for him to dress up; it's a jab at the dictatorship of relativism.

Also, I cherish the secret hope that, come the dandy revolution, I will be able to use a cigarette holder without looking like an ass.